[Colladamaya-updates] Weekly Development Build 0.73 Released!

[Guillaume L. <gui...@gm...>]

Hello everyone,

I implemented two interesting features this week. First, the
export/import of matrix animation will now work fully. As Maya, 3dsMax
and XSI use very different transform stacks, forcing the baking of the
matrices on export when doing data interchange may be necessary.
Second, I implemented the current COLLADA 1.4 morph target proposal.
The support for blend shapes is not backward compatible. This is one
rare case as, I don't expect other backward compability problems,
going into COLLADA 1.4.

There's a few other developments. Ray Donnelly contributed a nice
piece of code to support Maya's notes on transforms, geometries and
cameras. Thanks Ray. Most transform-based nodes will now export in the
scene graph: place3dTexture, lookAt, constraints, etc.

You can the latest version of the plug-in here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/colladamaya/ColladaPluginForMaya-0.73.zi=
p?download

Have a good week-end!
Guillaume Laforte
Feeling Software Inc.

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Recent Changes:

23/09/05 (Release 0.73)
=09(gla...@fe...)
=09Orthographic Camera Import: The orthographic width parameter, for
orthographic cameras, is halved, once imported into ColladaMaya. Added
conversion function when importing the orthographic left/right.
=09COLLADA 1.4 Morph Targets: THIS CHANGE IS NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE.
Refactored the export of blend shapes to reside with the other
controller: the skin cluster. Order the export of the controllers of a
mesh so that a morph controller can be the base mesh of a skin
controller. Implemented the export of the morph controller, according
to Andy's samples and Joshua's proposal. Implemented the ordered
import of the morph controllers. Refactored the creation of the
controller's target, as it may be a controller or a geometry.

22/09/05
=09(gla...@fe...)
=09Matrix Animation Import: That's one very important import feature
that is currently missing. This allows the import of data from any DCC
tools, whatever the strangeness of their transform stack. Add to the
possible animated elements, the <transform> element with the
associated 'matrix' plug. When importing the animations, if you are
loading a kMatrix value-type of animation, go through a special path
instead of creating animation curves. Read the COLLADA animation
matrices one by one, set them on the node and use a MEL command to set
a key on all the animation curves. The MEL command is too slow, so
create the animation curves for the transform plugs and assign them
animation keys according to the decomposed matrix factors. The shear
factors are not 'animatable', according to Maya, so force the
animation curve unto them.
=09Merged in Ray Donnelli's change for the import/export of Maya's
notes, described below.

=09(ra...@nu...)
=09Added importing and exporting of the Maya notes attribute for
meshes/geometries and transforms/nodes.

19/09/05
=09(gla...@fe...)
=09SourceForge #1295342: No animation is currently exported when "Bake
Transforms" is enabled. This was because the plug was not being cached
for sampling. Fixed the <accessor> element export and its parameters,
which had wrong attributes: type was "float" instead of "float4x4",
name was empty and is now "matrix", the stride was missing: it is now
"16".
=09Rotation Transform Animation: For non-Maya transforms, only load the
first identified rotation's animation.

18/09/05
=09(gla...@fe...)
=09Multiple Controller Instance Ordering: This is an issue when the
order of the controller instances is wrong. This happens with data
from 3dsMax. Ensure that instances are created to the mesh node,
rather than the transform. Ensure that the instantiation happens after
the controller has been completely created, by buffering them, when
found, in the controller library.